A is for Architecture Podcast

By Ambrose GillickArts Design

A is for Architecture Podcast episodes

June 15, 2023 Eleanor Jolliffe & Paul Crosby: Making Architects.
In Episode 36, Season 2 of A is for Architecture, Eleanor Jolliffe and Paul Crosby speak about their book, Architect: The Evolving Story of a Profession, published by RIBA Publishing in March this year. Eleanor is an architect with Allies and Morrison and writes regularly for the architectural press, including a
column for Building Design. Paul, also an architect, now leads the professional practice/ Part 3 course at the Architectural Association.
Thematically a chronology of the emergence of a very particular discipline, Architect looks at ‘the key questions of where the architectural profession originated in the Western tradition, why it is, how it is today and where it might be going next [and] postulate that architects' ability to adapt and reinvent themselves in the past will stand them in good stead for the uncertainties of the future.’
We shall see, shan’t we? In the meantime, listen to these two fine folk, and find out.
Eleanor is professionally here, at BD here, on LinkedIn here and tweets here. Paul’s AA profile is here, and LinkedIn-able here. The book is on the RIBA website here, where you can buy it.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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53 min
June 08, 2023 Charles Holland: Co-Living in the Countryside.
Episode 35/2 of A is for Architecture features Charles Holland, principal of Charles Holland Architects, and Professor of Architecture at the University of the Creative Arts, Canterbury. We speak about Charles’ work and research, focusing on his 2022 Davidson Prize-winning proposal, Co-Living in the Countryside, ‘a proposal for new rural housing […] developed as a collaboration with artist Verity-Jane Keefe, urban designer Joseph Zeal-Henry and the Quality of Life
Foundation.
‘Co-living in the Countryside responds to the brief for co-living and proposes a new rural housing typology [allowing for] shared spaces, flexible and adaptable house types and an approach based on mutual, cooperative governance’ on a site in Sussex.
There’s much online about Charles’ work, both recent and in his previous iteration as founder-director of FAT, a design practice with a remarkable body of work that challenged the pieties of much late modern architecture. You can have a look at it here. You can find Charles on Twitter, Insta and LinkedIn.
Co-Living has been covered in Dezeen, Architecture Today and the AJ (£), among others.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
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59 min
June 01, 2023 Andrew Beharrell & Rory Olcayto: New urban housing.
In Episode 34/2 of A is for Architecture, Andrew Beharrell and Rory Olcayto talk about their book, The Deck Access Housing Design Guide: A Return to Streets in the Sky, published by Routledge this year. Andrew is a Senior Advisor for the London-based architects, Pollard Thomas Edwards, where he was formerly director and senior partner. Rory is writer and critic at PTE, and formerly editor of the Architects’ Journal and chief executive of Open City.
‘Despite a chequered history that saw it linked with urban decay and social malaise in the 1970s and 80s, deck access housing […] is fast becoming the default solution for mid-rise housing in the UK, and London in particular. This is in part down to architects’ renewed interest in post-war Modernist typologies, but also due to specific planning standards that favour the qualities – dual-aspect plans, ‘public’ front doors – of deck access design.’ It features work from architects such as AHMM, DO Architecture, Henley Halebrown, Mæ, Maison Edouard François and Waechter + Waechter, among others.
The book has been covered in the press, including on Dezeen, the Architects’ Journal and Architecture Today. Then head to the Routledge website, where you might consider buying it.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
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1 hr 7 min
May 25, 2023 Ben Derbyshire: Politics, ethics and practice.
Episode 33/2 of A is for Architecture’s features Ben Derbyshire, Chair of HTA Design LLP and Immediate Past President of RIBA. We talk about Home Truths,
Ben’s 2022 book, published with Hatch Editions.
The book, so it states, is ‘a manifesto for professional practice in an era of multiple crises – in social, economic and racial disparity, in housing supply and
affordability, in climate change, in our emptying high streets and homelessness in our town centres. […] setting out the essential ideas and likely future developments that aspiring planners and designers of homes and places need to know about and bear in mind for their work, [reflecting on] the foundations for contemporary practice.’ You can watch Ben give it some on the NLA website here.
Great chat, lovely chap: listen, learn and share.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
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52 min
May 18, 2023 Susannah Hagan: Architecture and the Anthropocene.
In Episode 32 of A is for Architecture’s second season, Susannah Hagan talks about her book Revolution? Architecture and the Anthropocene, published by Lund Humphries in 2022. Susannah is an emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Westminster, founder of R_E_D (Research into Environment + Design) at the Royal College of Art, and has been a leading light in the establishment of environmental design as a serious, measured discipline within architecture. Revolution? is the fourth book in a series Susannah has written, documenting the relationship of architecture to the natural environment, including Taking Shape: A New Contract Between Architecture and Nature (Routledge, 2000), Digitalia: Architecture and the Environmental, the Digital and the Avant-Garde (Routledge, 2008), and Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City (Routledge, 2015).
The book deals with a peculiar difference – that of the wild success modernism in the twentieth century, contrasted to ecological architecture’s remarkable failure to impress upon the public its argument or ethics. For the publication, Susannah wrote ‘the particularities of [sustainable] architecture’s problem […] lie in its 20th century history and its self-perpetuating self-aggrandisement. What use is a profession of self-styled leaders who in the main have been, and still are, loitering at the back?’
That’s a good question, always. Have a sticky, see what you think. And share like you give a damn.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
More on Susannah here (on Wikipedia!), on Research Gate here, and on R_E_D here. There’s a good article in the AR from 2015 called Ecological Urbanism, which she also penned. You can get the book at the link above off the Lund Humphries website.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
Apple: podcasts.apple.com
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59 min
May 11, 2023 Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Jill Rudd: Making modern childhood.
In Episode 31/2 of A is for Architecture, Torsten Schmiedeknecht and Jill Rudd discusses their recent book, Building Children’s Worlds: The Representation of Architecture and Modernity in Picturebooks, a collection of essays by various scholars, co-edited with Emma Hayward, and which was published by Routledge this year. Jill is Professor of English at the University of Liverpool and Torsten is Reader in Architecture at the Liverpool School of Architecture, University of Liverpool. (Emma is a secondary school English teacher and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool).
‘The kinds of architectural worlds [children] are exposed to in picturebooks during their formative years may be assumed to influence how they regard such architecture as adults.’ How, then, has children’s literature sought to socialise young readers to the nature, values and stories of the modern epoch? In Building Children’s Worlds ‘scholars address questions such as: Is modern architecture used to construct specific narratives of childhood? Is it taken to support
‘negative’ narratives of alienation on the one hand and ‘positive’ narratives of happiness on the other? Do images of modern architecture support ideas of
‘community’? Reinforce ‘family values’? If so, what kinds of architecture, community and family? […] This book reveals what stories are told about modern architecture and shows how those stories affect future attitudes towards and expectations of the built environment.’
Big questions demand clever answers, so have a listen to the imaginative duo and see what you think. Sharing is caring, so do that too.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
More on Jill and her work is on the University of Liverpool website here. Torsten is here and his LinkedIn is here. (Emma is on LinkedIn here.) You can get the book from Routledge here.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
Apple: podcasts.apple.com
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Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk
1 hr 3 min
May 04, 2023 Albena Yaneva: Covid, bodies, cities and urban things.
In Episode 30, Season 2 of A is for Architecture, Professor Albena Yaneva discusses her very recent book, Architecture After Covid, published by Bloomsbury this year. Albena is Professor of Architectural Theory at the Manchester School of Architecture and Director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group at the Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester.
‘Architecture After COVID is the first book to explore the pandemic's transformative impacts upon the architectural profession. It raises new questions about the intertwined natures of architectural production, science, society, and spatial practice [exploring] how the pandemic modified the spatial conventions of everyday life in the city, […] transformed building typologies [and] leads us to rethink the social dimension of architecture and urban design; and ultimately proposes a radical re-evaluation of the conditions of architectural practice’.
Well, that’s what the blurb says, anyway. ‘Listen to Albena and see if it’s right.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Albena can be found on the Manchester School of Architecture website here, and she Twitters here; her LinkedIn is here. You can get the book here. Our previous conversation, Bruno Latour, ANT and Architecture can be gotten on Spotify and iTunes.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
Apple: podcasts.apple.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com
Google: podcasts.google.com
Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk
1 hr 1 min
April 27, 2023 Gary Boyd: Coal, architecture and modernity.
In Episode 29/2 of A is for Architecture, Professor Gary Boyd speaks on his book, Architecture and the Face of Coal: Mining and Modern Britain, published by Lund Humphries in December 2022. Gary is Professor of Architecture in the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast.
Mining and the Face of Coal is one output of a Major Research Fellowship Gary got from the Leverhulme Trust in 2018, and it describes a powerful story of heavy industry and the life of coal and coal miners in the development of modern Britain, including the emancipation of working class communities through collective action, politics and representation, as well as via policy, public debate and corporate enterprise. Mining, as Gary says, occupied a pivotal position in society, which ‘meant that miners were treated seriously […] all industry was completely influenced by mining or completely dependent upon it, so mining became this thing [which had] leverage. And this leverage meant obviously that they demanded at times bigger wages, but it also meant they became recipients, sometimes after actively canvassing for it, of goods and services, and especially services to do with their lifestyle, and that includes ideas of hygiene, ideas, ultimately, of housing, and also caught cultural and social pursuits. This generates a series of architectural interventions.’
The story of the coal industry is a fascinating and, for all of us of a certain heritage, retained history, the decline of which marked a significant portion of our personal histories. Its architecture has vanished, more or less, so this is an important study, describing a recent archaeology, in a way, of an epoch-defining practice. Thus, this podcast and Gary’s book are worth a sticky, believe.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Gary can be found on the QUB website here. You can get the book here.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
Apple: podcasts.apple.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com
Google: podcasts.google.com
Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk
1 hr 1 min
April 20, 2023 Gordana Fontana-Giusti: Foucault and the language of architects.
In Season 2, Episode 28 of A is for Architecture, Gordana Fontana Giusti discusses her 2013 book, Foucault for Architects, published by Routledge, as part of the Thinkers for Architects series. Gordana is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Kent School of Architecture & Planning, University of Kent, where she also serves as Deputy Head of School.
Foucault for Architects ‘concentrates on a number of historical and theoretical issues often addressed by Foucault […] in order to examine and demonstrate their relevancy for architectural knowledge, its history and its practice’. In an AA Files 26 essay from 1993, Paul Hirst suggested Foucualt’s relevance to architecture lay in his breaking down ‘the barrier between the common-sense category of objects and that of discourse: words, explanations, programmes, etc., which are held to be about objects. In architecture this yields the stubborn and conclusive distinction between buildings as objects, and architectural
theories, programmes and teaching that are about buildings. This installs a split between architecture and architectural discourse. The building is an object or non-discursive entity around which float the words of discourse.’
Listen to Prof Gordana, and get some answers.
Available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Gordana is presenting her thinking on Foucault at an event titled Dialogue 1: Foucault/Merleau-Ponty/Latour as part of a Thinkers for Architecture programme run by the AHRA, on 24 to 27 April 2023 at Manchester, UK, alongside previous podcast guests Jonathan Hale and Albena Yaneva. You can get the book here
(20% off in April, apparently), and find Gordana professionally here, on LinkedIn here, on Instagram here, and on Twitter here.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
Apple: podcasts.apple.com
Spotify: open.spotify.com
Google: podcasts.google.com
Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk
1 hr 24 min
April 13, 2023 Bryan Cantley: Architecture between the real and the virtual.
In Episode 27/ 2 of A is for Architecture Bryan Cantley speaks about his very extraordinary body of work, beautifully documented in Speculative Coolness: Architecture, Media, the Real, and the Virtual, published by Routledge earlier this month. Bryan is Professor of 3-Dimensional Design at the Department of Visual Arts at California State University, Fullerton, and founder/ director of Form:uLA, an experimental architecture, design, and graphic communication studio.
As the blurb has it, ‘Cantley’s work offers a unique and critical insight into the emergence of a liminal territory that exists between the real and the virtual that mainstream architecture has yet to exploit.’ Speculative Coolness documents Bryan’s extraordinary, imaginative and alluring architectures, with essays by
other leading theorists and writers discussing it import and impact. Aaron Betsky said eight years ago, ‘experimental architecture is a marginal phenomenon, pursued by a few brilliant, but isolated figures: Perry Kulper or Bryan Cantley come to mind’. No so marginal now, is it?
Listen, share and subscribe to the show on Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts and Amazon Music.
Speculative Coolness is available on the Routledge website here. Bryan is to be found on the CSUF website here and on Instagram as both bcantl3y
and speculativecoolness. His own website, bryancantley.com, features a 20% discount code for the book you’d be wise to use (till 30/4/23). Bryan’s
previous book, Mechudzu: New Rhetorics for Architecture, published by Springer Verlag GmbH in 2011. Bryan will be speaking on Speculative Coolness at UCLA in May this year.
Thanks for listening.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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aisforarchitecture.org
Apple: podcasts.apple.com
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Google: podcasts.google.com
Amazon: music.amazon.co.uk
53 min

About A is for Architecture Podcast

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Explore the world of architecture with the A is for Architecture Podcast hosted by Ambrose Gillick. Through conversations with designers, scholars and practitioners, Ambrose unpacks the creative and theoretical dimensions of architecture. Whether you're a professional, student, or design enthusiast, the A is for Architecture Podcast offers the best insights into how buildings shape society and society shapes buildings. To keep it free and good, subscribe to the podcast on Patreon.